SHARING OPTIONS:
Tommy Moyles took advantage of the dry spell in early March to get calved cows out to grass.
What a difference a dry spell makes on a farm. Despite it being busy, the good weather made work on the farm a pleasure. Cold easterlies and a few sunny days made a huge difference to ground conditions and I took the opportunity to get cattle out.
About two-thirds of the yearling heifers are gone out now and it was a challenge to resist temptation and let them all run off. It’s still early March and bad weather was forecast for this week. If I left them all to grass and the weather broke, I would have ended up bringing them back in. Holding the last few indoors should reduce any damage if things get too bad.
Cows calving on the dairy farm of Bill O Keeffe at Clara, Co Kilkenny.
We are back to the rain this week in Clara, but we had an exceptional couple of weeks before that, with grazing conditions almost perfect. It has been an excellent opportunity to graze some of the wetter paddocks on the farm.
It was also a great opportunity to get the maiden heifers out to grass and settled in to their grazing routine. It’s great to get them out early and settled into a grass diet for as long as possible before the breeding season.
Hopefully, the weather doesn’t break down too badly now, as most paddocks were only just getting to the comfortable stage this week.
SHARING OPTIONS:
Red and white heifers attract the most demand later in life when sold as in-calf replacements.
It is over five and a half months since my autumn cows finished calving and it has been a welcome break that has given me time to forget about all the problems associated with getting living calves on the ground.
I have actually been looking forward to the restart of calving – it is probably my favourite part of keeping suckler cows.
It is definitely not the easiest but there is something special about it. Maybe I am looking through rose-tinted glasses. Usually towards the end, I get a bit fed up and cannot wait for calving to finish.
Gerald Potterton farms tillage and some beef at Kildalkey, Co. Meath.\ Jack Caffrey
It was last Friday morning, the sun was shining and it had been dry for all of two days. The yard concrete was whitening off nicely, in a way not seen in a while. Although, we did get the slatted tanks emptied a fortnight ago in good enough conditions but it had rained a lot in the interim. Regular straw customer Mark was tying his load and he quipped: “Weather’s up and the pressure’s on – you’ll be busy next week.”
He had read my mind perfectly. The pressure is certainly on and there’s much to be done. The bould Bruno – no stranger to this column – has a classic but rude phrase to describe how excited some of his (male) contracting customers can become with the arrival of haymaking weather. I can’t possibly repeat it here but the same could be said of excited tillage farmers greeting the arrival of a perfect combination of sunshine and drying wind in the springtime.